He had lost his mother when he
was a little boy and had never been accustomed to gratuitous kindness;
therefore he was inclined to look upon her services as an interference
with his liberty, but he accepted them nevertheless. But all the same
the public house was his real home. There he paid for everything and
ran up no bills.
He was born in a small town in the interior of Sweden; consequently he
was a stranger in Stockholm. He knew nobody; was not on visiting terms
with any of the families and met his acquaintances nowhere but at the
public-house. He talked to them freely, but never gave them his
confidence, in fact he had no confidence to give. At school he taught
the third class and this gave him a feeling of having been stunted in
his growth. A very long time ago he had been in the third class
himself, had gradually crept up to the seventh, and had spent a few
terms at the University; now he had returned to the third; he had been
there for twelve years without being moved. He taught the second and
third books of Euclid; this was the course of instruction for the
whole year. He saw only a fragment of life; a fragment without
beginning or end; the second and third books. In his spare time he
read the newspapers and books on archaeology.
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